CSS: The Definitive Guide

Buy this book if you're new to CSS. This will become your 'bible', up to and including 2.1. Be advised, however, that it is excruciatingly technical and thorough. Pages and pages on line height, vertical/horizontal spacing, how to make it look right, make it look wrong, why you SHOULDN'T do things a certain way, etc. Like I said: thorough. But once you make it through the 450+ pages, you will have a thorough and technically superior knowledge base of CSS, and can confidently (and quickly!) absorb the prevalent CSS3. Every question I had about CSS was answered by this text. All of 'em. Meyer begins by explaining the unique relationship CSS has to HTML as it was designed. Many of the newer, or combination HTML/CSS textbooks out there these days do not address this relational importance. Good stuff, as it teaches one to utilize CSS in the way it was designed: to augment markup.

As others have pointed out this is not a CSS "cookbook" full of design templates. If that is what you are looking for, you will be disappointed. If however, you want to understand CSS, how it works, best practices and so on, this is a great book. Although you can find all of the info in various places on the web, Mr. Meyer is a good author explaining in detail how things work and bringing up valuable points to be aware of along the way. A good addition to any web developers library.

Eric Meyer is considered an authority on HTML and CSS issues and this book certainly demonstrates why. He takes every element of CSS and defines context and specifics with an amazing amount of detail, but supremely well organized so that it's actually readable in a conversational way rather than a textbook or reference book way. If you are planning to regularly deal with ALL of the ramifications of designing web sites, this book is a must-have to provide a thorough foundation. If you only want to make a web page for something simple, or just once in your life, this may be too much information, but reading it may cause you to want to do more with your simple web page! The book is dense with text and has relatively few diagrams, and some of the examples take some study to understand what they're trying to convey, but if you're a serious student of CSS, Meyer's text rewards you for your effort.

This book is very well written and very thorough. I already knew css but thought that I learned it a while ago so I needed a brush up and an update. Turns out there was a lot that I never learned so a brush up lesson turned into a full blown lesson. Had I never bought this book I never would have known that, I definitely would suggest this book to anyone who wants to learn styling for the web.

This is a book about CSS, and CSS, is about the presentation aspect of web pages. How the text appears, the size, the layout, etc. However, the presentation style inside the book is kind of sloppy. For example, on page 186 and 187, when it talks about inline elements, Figure 7.33 "Strongly emphasized" is printed not as tall as Figure 7.34 and 7.35 when the CSS style is the same. And the word being used is "which is" and is changed to "that is" in Figure 7.34 and 7.35, when it is changing the vertical-align only. The reader would be better helped if they can see the contrast of the CSS style, without the change of wording for no reason at all. Also, in Figure 7.34, the bigger words should not overlap with the smaller words above, as tested in CSS compliant browsers, but it is printed so on the book. Then again, in Figure 7.36, for no reason at all, the picture is shrunk down to 1/4 size of the previous examples, when they are all talking about the same case except for some vertical-align difference. It may be done just because the page is running out of space. That is pretty sloppy. On page 181 to 182, it talks about various terms of the inline box model, and there is no figure at all to exemplify the terms at all. Then after the reader goes through a tough time to read through those text of hard definitions, 3 pages later, the figures start to appear. Please, can the book be designed so that the readers are considered? CSS is partly for making the content easy for the audience, and how about this CSS book is made easier for its audience too? But I have to admit that this book is very definitive about CSS. If you spend some time to read this book, then you will understand CSS much better.

bit out of date, however - it is a really good start for someone to learn scripting of CSS, and with a bit of adaptation - it WORKS! ~8) CSS curious? - Get the book!

I feel obliged to review this book after being unable to accomplish a simple css task: designing an improved css file. Meyers knows his subject. But he keeps using fancy examples or unnecessarily complex coverage that detracts from the content non-experts need to learn. For example, I was attempting to figure out why a certain case of inheritance is failing. His section on that is too complex to follow, because he covers the entire inheritance resolution scheme of css, rather than the simple cases that most frequently appear. So I was never able to solve the problem. I had to resort to searching the net. After reading the first few chapters, I needed to go back and find where he discussed first-child. Skimming did not find it, so I checked the index. It's not there! So I was forced again to search the net. This could have been resolved by writing clearly. Every time you introduce something of importance, bold it or put it in a section heading. Then skimming will allow finding it easily. At this point I decided the book was not quite worthy of sitting on the same shelf as my dozens of other web dev books, and so I tossed it in the trash. Your mileage may vary, but for me it's a time waster.

A great book to learn css from and easy to follow. I have looked to this book more times than I can remember. Don't give up. Css is hard to learn.

I have read several books now on CSS, but I rate this one as one of the best - although it is quite heavy at times, it is worth pursuing as it gives a thorough grounding in the real technicalities of CSS. This edition is somewhat dated now - not covering CSS3 and its application to HTML5, maybe worth buying a cheaper secondhand edition for now. On Eric Meyers website he says he is working on the new edition of this book but not due out until mid 2016. Highly recommended.

Helps one understand CSS ground up. Historical context on CSS helps understand why things the way they are....

Ce guide n'a plus vraiment de preuves à faire, étant reconnu comme une grande référence CSS. Cela dit il faut quand même admettre qu'il est un peu dépassé à l'heure d'aujourd'hui, même si les exemples restent utiles et pertinents.

Excellent. Quite readable and good reference. I bought it because I had tinkered with CSS and copied bits that other people had done but never really got to grips with it.

Was outdated